disturbances"
broke out in western China as a reply of the railway shareholders in the
province of Szechwan to the government decree of nationalization of all
the railways. The modernist students, most of whom were sons of
merchants who owned railway shares, supported the movement, and the
government was unable to control them. At the same time a great
anti-Manchu revolution began in Wuch'ang, one of the cities of which
Wuhan, on the Yangtze, now consists. The revolution was the result of
government action against a group of terrorists. Its leader was an
officer named Li Yuean-hung. The Manchus soon had some success in this
quarter, but the other provincial governors now rose in rapid
succession, repudiated the Manchus, and declared themselves independent.
Most of the Manchu garrisons in the provinces were murdered. The
governors remained at the head of their troops in their provinces, and
for the moment made common cause with the revolutionaries, from whom
they meant to break free at the first opportunity. The Manchus
themselves failed at first to realize the gravity of the revolutionary
movement; they then fell into panic-stricken desperation. As a last
resource, Yuean Shih-k'ai was recalled (November 10th, 1911) and made
prime minister.

Yuean's excellent troops were loyal to his person, and he could have made
use of them in fighting on behalf of the dynasty. But a victory would
have brought no personal gain to him; for his personal plans he
considered that the anti-Manchu side provided the springboard he needed.
The revolutionaries, for their part, had no choice but to win over Yuean
Shih-k'ai for the sake of his troops, since they were not themselves
strong enough to get rid of the Manchus, or even to wrest concessions
from them, so long as the Manchus were defended by Yuean's army. Thus
Yuean and the revolutionaries were forced into each other's arms. He then
began negotiations with them, explaining to the imperial house that the
dynasty could only be saved by concessions. The revolutionaries--apart
from their desire to neutralize the prime minister and general, if not
to bring him over to their side--were also readier than ever to
negotiate, because they were short of money and unable to obtain loans
from abroad, and because they could not themselves gain control of the
individual governors. The negotiations, which had been carried on at
Shanghai, were broken off on December 18th, 1911, because the
revolutionar